Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2026

31 MARCH-APRIL 2026 ASTRO PUBLISHING Zhang, the principal investigator on this study. “This is a new type of planet atmosphere that nobody has ever seen before. Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet — like water, methane, and carbon dioxide — we saw molecular carbon, specifically C 3 and C 2 .” Molecular carbon is very unusual because at these tempera- tures, if there are any other types of atoms in the atmosphere, carbon will bind to them. (Temperatures on the planet range from 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit at the coldest points of the night side to 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit at the hottest points of the day side.) Molecular carbon is only dominant if there’s almost no oxygen or nitrogen. Out of the approximately 150 planets that as- tronomers have studied inside and outside the solar system, no others have any detectable molecular car- bon. PSR J2322-2650b is extraordi- narily close to its star, just 1 million T his artist’s concept shows what the exoplanet called PSR J2322-2650b (left) may look like as it orbits a rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar (right). Two radio beams are emitted from the pulsar’s magnetic poles, whip- ping around like a beam from a lighthouse. Gravitational forces from the much heavier pulsar are pulling the Jupiter-mass world into the shape of a lemon. This planet, studied with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, appears to have an exotic atmosphere unlike any ever seen before. How the planet came to be is a mystery. [NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)] study the planet in intricate detail across its whole orbit. “This system is unique because we are able to view the planet illuminated by its host star, but not see the host star at all,” said Maya Beleznay, a third-year PhD candidate at Stanford University in California who worked on modeling the shape of the planet and the geometry of its orbit. “So we get a really pristine spectrum. And we can study this system in more detail than normal exoplanets.” “The planet orbits a star that’s com- pletely bizarre — the mass of the Sun, but the size of a city,” said the University of Chicago’s Michael was ‘What the heck is this?’ It’s ex- tremely different from what we ex- pected.” This planet-mass object was known to orbit a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star. A pulsar emits beams of electromagnetic radiation at regular intervals typically ranging from milliseconds to seconds. These pulsing beams can only be seen when they are pointing directly to- ward Earth, much like beams from a lighthouse. This millisecond pulsar is expected to be emitting mostly gamma rays and other high energy particles, which are invisible to Webb’s infrared vision. Without a bright star in the way, scientists can